apostropher, you and other dissenters keep forgetting - the US is double-big top dog, so WE CREATE OUR OWN REALITY. We all have maps of reality in our own head and rather than keep adjusting the map to reflect dissonant information, it's much less painful simply to ignore such information. An even better approach is to be so confident of your own mental map that dissonant information is not even perceived.

This can work rather well on matters that don't affect individual voters' daily lives, such as budgetary issues and foreign wars.

When the mismatch between professed reality and incoming information becomes perceptibly large, let's be realistic - you don't really expect those who are responsible for policy to actually acknowledge that a mistake has been made, do you? That's not a recipe that benefits any of the actors, as long as they remain in the Administration or involved in an election campaign.

Only those out of power have an interest in calling a spade a spade - and their motives can be quite easily spun by those not eager either to surrender the reins or for infamy.

We have politicized reality (said the dissenter).

By that same logic, TT, you could also say that those who are out of power have an interest in making things look worse than they are, and ignore positive developments.

That may not be the case with regard to Iraq right now, but it's misleading to say that "Only those out of power have an interest in calling a spade a spade". It would be more accurate to say that people, whether in or out of power, have an interest in emphasizing facts that support their views, and minimizing or rejecting facts that don't.

You could see this phenomemon happening on the left after the Iraqi elections of early 2005, when things were heading in a more positive direction. Back then, Jon Stewart said:

What if Bush, the president, ours, has been right about this all along? I feel like my world view will not sustain itself and I may, and again I don’t know if I can physically do this, implode.

Of course, given the continuing violence in Iraq and the difficulties of forming an Iraqi government, Jon probably isn't having the same pangs of doubt today. But his statement back then illustrates that war opponents, just like war supporters, can have a hard time accepting "dissonant information".

wait, wait... did someone say "coffee?"

people, whether in or out of power, have an interest in emphasizing facts that support their views, and minimizing or rejecting facts that don't.

Yes, this is obviously true.

after the Iraqi elections of early 2005, when things were heading in a more positive direction.

Well, I don't speak for TheLeft™, but I was very skeptical then. Let's go to the tape, from a week after the elections.

We've yet to see whether this election results in the formation of a government and, further, whether that government has any sort of stability. Neither result is guaranteed.

And neither result has yet been realized. The point being that having an election doesn't indicate that things are moving in a positive direction, it only indicates that an election was held. Because an election is not an end, but only a means to an end—specifically, a functioning government—that requires all sorts of other preconditions (like democratic institutions, lack of a civil war, and leaders with domestic legitimacy) that Iraq was and still is totally lacking.

It did give the purple finger brigade an opportunity to say we were turning (yet another) corner and brand skeptics as defeatist naysayers (or, the perennial favorite, traitors), which I guess counts for something, but in retrospect, the skepticism was completely justified. Iraq still isn't close to forming a government, and any government that does form is, at a bare minimum, years away from being able to govern.

When I use the term "reality-based," that doesn't hinge on supporting or opposing the war. It hinges on accepting the facts on the ground, rather than dismissing them as partisan bias or media distortions. As it stands, and is it has stood since before the invasion, the facts are very, very unpleasant and are getting worse, not better.

Now, it is possible to argue, as Hinderaker does, that a few decades down the road, we'll look back and think this was all justified. That does conveniently exempt supporters from having to acknowledge the utter lack of progress three years into the project. However, if the Bush administration had tried to sell this war as a trillion-dollar, multi-decade enterprise of nation building amid a religiously-driven civil war, I really really doubt he could have gotten any sort of support for it. And, of course, they didn't sell it that way.

They did, however, brand those of us who predicted exactly that as out of touch with reality.

By that same logic, TT, you could also say that those who are out of power have an interest in making things look worse than they are, and ignore positive developments.

This is conceivable, GB, but it goes 'round and 'round, as I noted. Those who spun the truth in the first instance can continue to dodge simply by saying those who criticize are doing so in order to score points, and thus their "facts" cannot be trusted. Dissenters' view are also discounted as unpatriotic, etc., and even those from within the Administration are written off as sour grapes, trying to sell a book, and so on.

The truth has been politicized, so the buck stops nowhere with the Administration.

It would be more accurate to say that people, whether in or out of power, have an interest in emphasizing facts that support their views, and minimizing or rejecting facts that don't.

I do agree with you that the same psychological phenomenon is also apparent in the left; both left and right - and those on other parts of the spectrum - share the same human nature, after all. I think that the is an evolved mental devisce that largely functions outside of conscious thought.

Regards,

Tom